


The radiance of the future

by this_is_a_love_story (diner_drama)



Category: Fleabag (TV), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 01:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19713223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diner_drama/pseuds/this_is_a_love_story
Summary: Enjolras believed in the revolution. Enjolras believed in the revolution so fervently that it was almost always the sole focus of his mind. His lot was not to love single human beings, but to love the Republic, to the exclusion of all else. He was a priest of the ideal.So when Grantaire disappeared to an alleyway out the back of the café to indulge in an unladylike cigarette, Enjolras wasn't quite sure why he followed her.





	The radiance of the future

**Author's Note:**

  * For [standalone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone/gifts).



> In my recent Fleabag fic, [Love is awful](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18755020/chapters/44490514), I left a cryptic crossword clue in the final chapter: " _Disheartening vulnerable scrapes for hunted redhead?_ " 6 letters, ends in an S.
> 
> The first person to divine the answer was [standalone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/standalone), who in addition to being a whiz at the cryptic writes wonderful Les Miserables Enjolras/Grantaire fanfiction, which I highly recommend you check out.
> 
> It occurred to me on reading that the story of Enjolras the devout believer and Grantaire the skeptical cynic had some wonderful parallels to Fleabag, so here is an unholy cross-over franken-fic that nobody asked for. 
> 
> And of course, the answer was _Vulpes_.

Nobody was entirely certain why she had chosen Café Musain as her preferred drinking spot. The student wing of Friends of the ABC swarmed the place on most days, talking in impassioned terms about the Revolution, about the rights of man, and the stirring of the French proletariat, with all the zeal of true believers.

R. Grantaire was a woman who took good care not to believe in anything.

She could generally be found propped up by a table in the back room, engaging in the kind of cynical rants that brought all listeners to abject, personal misery. She rallied against human nature, against change, against the very notion of faith itself.

It must be exhausting, Enjolras thought, to maintain that level of ironic detachment for one's entire life.

Enjolras believed in the revolution. Enjolras believed in the revolution so fervently that it was almost always the sole focus of his mind. His lot was not to love single human beings, but to love the Republic, to the exclusion of all else. He was a priest of the ideal.

So when Grantaire disappeared to an alleyway out the back of the café to indulge in an unladylike cigarette, Enjolras wasn't quite sure why he followed her.

* * *

Smoke curled in the cold air from the cigarette between her fingers. She was drunk, presumably, but her eyes maintained her usual sparkle of wit, and she straightened when he approached, regarding him with great interest.

The worst thing about Grantaire, he thought, was her intelligence. If she had simply chosen to commit to something, to _anything_ , she could have set the world alight with her razor-sharp mind, but instead she was committed only to her own pleasure. Her talent for polemic, if directed to worthy goals, could rouse armies and launch ships, and instead she spent her days making barmaids feel mildly uncomfortable. Everything about her character offended his principles.

Nonetheless, every conversation with her, every touch, ignited a fire in him that rivalled his devotion to the cause. It was a problem.

She cocked her head to one side, studying him.

"His beautiful neck," he heard her murmur, as though to herself. "What fine marble." She fished out a spare cigarette and a box of matches from her bodice, and handed them to him.

"I think you upset Louison," he began, trying his best to ignore the brush of their fingers over the matchbox. "What was the topic today?"

"The various different kinds of urchins and the things we call them instead." She gestured expansively with her cigarette. "Dish-washer, baker's boy, dauphin. All urchins at base." 

"She didn't enjoy being called an urchin?"

"We're _all_ urchins, Enjolras," she said, fixing him with an intense look, and running her hand lightly up his arm. "You know that as well as anyone."

"Such insight wasted to such a base purpose," he lamented. "Why would you believe in something awful, when you could believe in something wonderful? Your efforts would be best put to the good of your fellow man. Where will you be when the barricades are built?"

"I prefer a breakfast to a hearse," she told him, as though he were an idiot. "You waste your efforts planning your utopia."

"What's utopia today is flesh and blood tomorrow."

"You've flesh and blood today," she purred, gripping his arm and pressing the length of her body against his, "and what good is it doing you?"

"We're not going to have sex," he said, for the umpteenth time. "It won't bring anything good."

She took a final drag on her cigarette and dropped the butt onto the floor, grinding it disdainfully with the heel of her boot. "Fuck you, then," she said with a smile, and headed back inside.

* * *

Enjolras was as cold as ice and as bold as fire - sober, earnest, and devastating. After a life of disappointments and disillusions, he was the only thing she straightforwardly believed in - a shining beacon of light in a dirty world full of falsehoods.

Each day, Grantaire filled her mind with twilight in the form of beer, wine, absinthe, and the wilful detachment from ever really meaning anything she said. She entertained herself by making pronouncements and haranguing the hapless mortals who surrounded her, wiling away the hours until her angel would reappear, his eyes unerringly finding hers from across the room. 

On this particular afternoon, he had stridden into the hall in a fluster and was entreating each of his comrades to help him with a mission of whipping up the flames of revolt in a recalcitrant group of journeymen a few streets over. His face was flushed in his passion, the urgent need to advance the aims of the revolution thrumming through the sinews of his body. Grantaire, earthbound in doubt, loved to watch Enjolras soaring in the upper air of faith.

"Grantaire," he said, rounding on her after exhausting every other option. "I don't imagine you could put aside your cynicism for a moment to lend a hand? For once, could you spare some effort for a dream, or are you totally useless?"

"I am a daring drinker of dreams," she pronounced, captivated by his attention. "I'm not totally useless." She took a long sip and considered her position. "I can be used as a bad example."

"Are you capable of being good for something?" The frustrated disappointment in his voice was almost painful to hear.

"I have the vague ambition to be," she sniffed.

"You don’t believe in anything."

She raised her chin to look at him, firm in her one conviction. "I believe in you."

* * *

A quick outfit change later, she stormed back through the café and stalked up to Enjolras, who was alone in the back alley. Her dress was the brightest crimson, short and airy and captivating. 

"Red, she whispered in his ear, pressing against him and leaning close. "The blood red of Robespierre." 

"Be serious," he said, stiffening.

She chuckled. "I'm wild," she whispered, her breath hot against his ear. He shuddered, despite himself, and drew his hands reverently over her hips.

He turned away from her, once, twice, then changed his mind and pushed her up against the wall, kissing her frantically, pouring himself into her. She pressed herself against him, her soft body insinuating itself against every inch of his. Her lips were hot and insistent against his, a prayer to her own personal deity.

"I don't know what this feeling is," he murmured.

She brushed a hand through his hair and kissed him, once, on the forehead. "Be easy," she whispered, "buck up, smile, charm, off we go. We'll be okay." She walked off, smiling fondly, to fan the flames of rebellion amongst the idle proletariat.

When he came to check on her, and found her not fanning any flames at all, but rather engaged in a raucous game of dominos, she turned away to avoid the disappointment in his eyes.

* * *

The next time they saw each other, Grantaire was mid-flow in one of her diatribes. "Hair is everything!" she cried, waving a bottle around for emphasis. "We wish it wasn’t so we could actually think about something else occasionally. But it is. It's the difference between a good day and a bad day."

Enjolras simply rolled his eyes and left the room.

* * *

Snubbed, spurned, rebuffed and back again for more, Grantaire was holding court in her customary corner.

"Life is a hideous invention," she said. Nobody was listening. "A hideous invention by somebody I don't know. It doesn't last, and it's good for nothing. You break your neck simply living."

Enjolras was away, fighting the good fight - not that they were on speaking terms anyway - and her life without her North Star was rudderless, empty. She took a long pull from her drink. "I just want someone to tell me how to live my life," she mumbled, "because so far I think I've been getting it wrong."

"I just want to cry," she burst out. "I just want to cry, all the time. You all feel like this a little bit!" she accused. "You're just not talking about it."

She contemplated her glass listlessly. "Either that, or I'm the only one." Another gulp of absinthe. "This is beyond a joke."

As the sweet blanket of drunkenness drew itself over her, Grantaire pillowed her face on her arms on the sticky, forlorn table, and let sleep overcome her.

"If he had come for me," she said sadly, before she drifted away, "I would have followed him." 

* * *

The resistance were regrouping in the café when Enjolras noticed Grantaire slumped back in the corner, dead drunk.

He roused her from her sleep. "Go, this isn't the place for you."

She recoiled as though he'd slapped her. 

"I mean that with the greatest of compliments," he reassured her. "Leave revolt to the believers."

"Let me sleep here," she entreated with indescribable gentleness. "Let me sleep here, until I die."

"Grantaire," he reproved, looking into her tender and troubled eyes, "you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying."

She smiled to herself, a secret smile. "You will see."

* * *

"Down with your heads, hug the wall!" shouted Enjolras, as a staccato burst of gunfire sounded. "Kneel, just kneel, along the barricade!"

He was wreathed in the morning light, candid and grave as he addressed his comrades. "The whole army of Paris is to strike," he informed them, "and the populace is not stirring. You are abandoned." 

He paused, ready to let them flee, to save themselves.

From the obscurest depths of the group, a woman's voice, strong and unwavering, offered the decisive word.

"So be it!" she declared. "Let us offer the protests of corpses. Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the people."

There was a general noise of assent, and the decision was made. The anonymous speaker vanished into the shadows after having represented for a minute, in a lightning flash, the people and God.

* * *

Enjolras was standing on the crest of the barricade, his hair dishevelled and his beautiful, austere face raised to speak.

"Citizens," he began, his voice holding the gravity of a sermon and the thrill of a hymn. "This barricade is made neither of paving stones, nor of timbers, nor of iron; it is made of two mounds, a mound of ideas and a mound of sorrows. Here misery encounters the ideal. Here the day embraces the night, and says: I will die with you and you will be born again with me.

"Whatever happens to-day, through our defeat as well as through our victory, it is a revolution that we are about to create. As conflagrations light up a whole city, so revolutions illuminate the whole human race. We are advancing to the union of peoples; we are advancing to the unity of man. No more fictions; no more parasites. The real governed by the true, that is the goal. 

"Oh! the human race will be delivered, raised up, consoled! We affirm it on this barrier. From the heights of our sacrifice will come this cry of love! We are born with love, and in life we must choose the right place to put it. It is awful, this love! A painful, frightening hell! But we do not go through it alone. Love is not something that weak people do, and in our unity there is the strength to know what's right.

"He who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn."

* * *

When the soldiers stormed the café, they found only Enjolras still standing, the rest having escaped or been killed. All, that is, except for Grantaire, who was not standing but rather slumped over her table, still unconscious, unnoticed by all.

Enjolras' head was held high as he regarded the soldiers with haughty grace, and they hesitated on seeing his radiant beauty, his bravery, the pure and unwavering light of his faith.

He turned to them, chin raised, defiant and bold to the last. "Shoot me," he said with confidence. 

There was a moment of silence, sudden and oppressive after the noise of the fight, and it was this which finally woke Grantaire. 

She surveyed the scene in front of her, a fire in her eyes, and made a quick decision, as easily as breathing. Striding to Enjolras, she grasped his hand. He started, then smiled and pressed her hand tightly.

"Long live the Republic!" she cried, unafraid and brilliant in her new faith.

Grantaire turned to him. "I fucking love you," she said with conviction.

He regarded her with wide eyes, as though seeing her for the first time. "I love you too," he said, holding her gaze. They shared a moment, quiet and long overdue. 

Then, as he held his ragged red flag aloft, they turned to the guns, ready to play their part. 

The lovers died hand in hand, in the radiance of the future, and entered a tomb all flooded with the dawn.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd usually ask people to leave me a comment to tell me your favourite line, but many of the best lines in this were in fact written by Victor Hugo.
> 
> Tell me anyway.


End file.
